Problem Solved

Fiorella was half-watching a special on climate change last night as she worked on revisions of WHAT THE HEART WANTS, and it seems to her that improved and less costly methods of the desalinization of sea water would allow us to remove enough water from the ocean to counter the rise in sea levels while also providing water for areas dealing with severe drought.

And, yes, thank you--Fio will accept the Nobel.

Rainmaker

Your Fio can control the weather.

Remember two years ago when she stored bathtub water in half-gallon plastic milk bottles?  Well, she'd like to dump them all off the balcony into the backyard now, but the second she mentions so doing, the skies open up and it rains felines and canines.

If only she'd realized her talent during the drought two years ago.

Multi-tasker

Fio has to pat herself on the back because she's a never-say-die kinda gal.  Sure, she has her ups and downs--and those downs can be twenty miles deep--but she's usually so sunny as to be irritating.  And she's always loaded with ideas--again, irritatingly so.  Those gallons of bath water she stored on the balcony last year in anticipation of the drought of the century this year are still there, probably breeding the killer bacteria of the century. 

Yeah, Fio is always into something and has a notebook full of back-up assignments to boot.  Right now she's racing to finish the final run-through of the former Princess of Bosque Bend, running laundry upstairs, and pondering how to handle this blog while she's incapacitated after the hip surgery on Wednesday.

Please wish her well.  On all counts.

Deer and Drought Resistant

As far as Fiorella's concerned, spring is here. She's put away her jeans in favor of shorts, and Husband visited the nursery yesterday, where he sank a small fortune into yucca and rosemary, both of them deer- and drought-resistant.

Fio loves the new view. The grass is bright green, and wildflowers are beginning to bloom on the verges of I-35--baby bluebonnets in the midst of millions of little yellow dots. The pink primroses should show soon. And the red paintbrushes.

Fio and Husband don't have any bluebonnets on their property, but they do have purple verbena, wild and tame. Those weird butterfly bushes the landscaper planted are in full bloom, but Fio is preparing to replace them with rosemaries because she doesn't want to ruin her other hip nursing the butterflies through the drought this summer like she did last year.

Yes, summer will come, the rain will dry up, and the drought will be in full swing again, but this time Fio and Husband will be better prepared.

Yucca and rosemary, that's the way to go.

Succor Denied

N-o-o-o-o-o-o! Tell me it isn't so! Local meteorologists are calling for a temperature of 110 today and extending our triple-digit weather into early September.

What teasers those weathermen are. They made forecasts of rain possibilities that never materialized and now have reneged on their promise of cooler weather come September.

At this rate, Fio and Husband are going to be trekking gray water out to the landscaping till they themselves are old and gray.

Respite

Ah, the end of the drought is in sight. Our Special Utility District has ratcheted us down from Stage 4 watering restrictions to stage 3. We can now use our in-ground system once a week on our designated day and hose by hand on another designated day. Fio and Husband ran the system yesterday evening and the ground is still damp this morning.

We'll continue supplying bath water to the planting beds on the other days, of course, which leads to a problem. What can we do with our agua usada on the days we can legally water with agua pura? Certainly not just send it down the drain like we used to. Maybe buy a couple of big vinyl trash cans to siphon it into for when times get tough again.

And they will.

In Thrall to a Watering Schedule

The bathtub watering system was sort of fun at first, but now it's gotten onerous. Fio is tired of hobbling up and down the stairs to set the pond motor and straighten the hoses. She's tired of spending at least an hour a day outside in the 100-degree heat with watering. She's tired of filling milk bottles with the bath water left over from the siphon.

But losing the plantings would be worse. Pray for rain.

Ever Inventive

Despite the 107-degree temperatures, our plants are thriving.

They should be. Fiorella and husband devote an hour very evening to caring for them-- and considerable ingenuity. She's told you about using plastic milk bottles, but the delivery systems have been adjusted too. The harness holding the milk bottles as they descend from the second-floor landing to the first floor dining room has been simplified to a loop on the end of the rope, and every bottle is capped to avoid accidentally washing the said dining room's floor. And Husband is, as of Monday morning, hooking the bath water hose up to a sprinkler. After all, it's agua usada so drought watering restrictions (hand-held hoses only) don't apply.

Humans, ever inventive. No wonder we trumped the Neanderthals.

Rain, rain, come this way . . . .

Today, Fiorella's brain is as empty as the local lakes and as dry as the parched earth. Yes, for once, she has nothing to say. Except to plead for rain. She's tired of spending her evenings toting plastic milk bottles of water outside to her thirsty plants, the ones she can't reach with the hose by pumping last night's bath water out of the tub. But looking at the ten-day forecast, the weather ahead is going to be even hotter, up to 106 degrees.

Now she understands why those ancient southwestern Indians abandoned their pueblos when the weather cycled hot one too many times.

Mother of Invention

Fio came home from a meeting yesterday to find that Husband had rigged up the bathwater-siphoning system he'd been mulling over for the past week. And it didn't cost a cent. He used an old hose, some rank-looking tubing, and an old pond motor. According to Husband, it's all weatherproof and stores in a neat little corner of the balcony. Not only that, but it works! Fio was able to water the whole front planting bed--generously!

Little did Fio guess how important her nightly wallow would become to the local eco-system.

Spot On

Fio doesn't like waste, which translates into trying to find uses for those ubiquitous plastic milk bottles that take up so much room in the trash can. Lately, she's been using them to store urine, which she and Husband sprinkle around the planting beds to repel foraging by deer and other wildlife, but now she's also using them to store bath water for spot watering of the landscape.

Yes, with the drought in full swing, watering restrictions are more stringent than ever. But Fio paid too much for those plants to let them die so out she trots every morning and evening, milk bottles of water in hand.

The verbenas lift their heads to greet her, and the mountain laurels sigh in relief.